


the good kind of dirty

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Agender Character, Attempt at Humor, Feelings, First Time, Gender Identity, Idiots in Love, Other, Praise Kink, Sexual Identity, Wing Kink, ambiguous sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 21:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20034232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: “What if I tried having ah, um, a- a gender…. For a bit.”A mighty furrow appeared in the space between Crowley’s hairline and the tops of his sunglasses, disrupting the perfectly wicked curve his brow had arched itself into. “What, just pick one and take it for a spin?”Aziraphale clasped his hands together in his lap. “Well, yes.”





	the good kind of dirty

**Author's Note:**

> A million and one thanks to grimdarkfandango and marchingjaybird who encouraged me and helped me actually finish this thing after I wrote half of it in a fevered daze and then panicked because I love these two Too Much.

_Somewhere over the Atlantic_

Aziraphale shifted in an attempt to stall the sensation of pins and needles waiting to creep into his feet. The seat he perched upon was terribly small. And rather uncomfortable. “It’s been a few decades,” he remarked to his traveling companion, “but I don’t recall these being so small. Or so uncomfortable.”

Sat on the other side of the unoccupied middle seat, Crowley shrugged eloquently. (This particular eloquent shrug had over the millennia practically become code for, “Sorry about that one” or, in the modern vernacular, “My bad.”) Crowley was equally restless and uncomfortable despite having thrust his legs into the aisle with abandon. He rhythmically flipped a lighter around in his fingers, occasionally tapping it against the spot on the armrest where ashtrays had once come installed by default and which now offered multiple small ports for personal listening devices. 

Aziraphale’s eyebrows and the corners of his mouth crept up in their own form of apology. Not bothering to keep as up-to-date with technology as Crowley did, oftentimes airplanes sported the wrong ports entirely, but the point is, he’d tried.

“I detest flying,” Crowley muttered. He stuffed his lighter away into his jacket pocket, crossed one ankle over the other, and grabbed up the in-flight magazine from the seatback. “There’s always a wait for everything, and while it’s hilarious how quickly Americans took to the idea of removing their shoes and full-body scans, the rest of the delays aren’t my doing at all.” He buried his nose in glossy pages that smelled of bad cologne and overpriced spa treatments and blithely ignored the grumbling queue which presently formed down the aisle. Aziraphale tossed an encouraging smile at an older gentleman in a v-neck jumper who was on his third attempt to politely step over the sprawl of Crowley’s absurdly long legs in order to reach the (also small and uncomfortable) toilet facilities at the rear of the plane.

“We could have taken an ocean liner. That would have made our holiday literally ‘under the radar’ wouldn’t it.” Aziraphale paused to consider what he knew about submersibles. “Or would that have been demonstrably ‘over the radar’…? _Between_ the radar?”

“It would’ve been _tediousss,_” said Crowley. After his own considering pause, he added: “But they do offer larger quantities of alcohol. And bingo.”

Another few hours of enduring the small and uncomfortable seat flew by before Aziraphale spoke up again. “Crowley,” he began in his very best oh-so-casual and nonchalant tone of voice, “I’ve been thinking.”

This was no surprise to Crowley, since Aziraphale reserved that tone of voice entirely for the sort of _thinking_ that he believed--often incorrectly--needed to be circumspect but for which he inevitably sought Crowley’s counsel. Like the time he wanted to grow a mustache. Or when he discovered the reason there were a great deal more people trying to come into his shop to browse--or, worse, to actually buy something--is because it had received praise on the internet despite all his best efforts to the contrary. He couldn’t very well only turn the sign to open for twenty minutes at a time every fortnight now could he? (As a used bookshop owner he could, and subsequently had. He also threw a few more odd smells about the place for good measure.) Crowley’s head lolled back and he arched his brow quizzically. The leg which had migrated from being crossed over his ankle to now crossed over his knee bounced idly as he waited for Aziraphale to finish his _thinking_.

“What if I tried having ah, um, a- a gender…. For a bit.”

A mighty furrow appeared in the space between Crowley’s hairline and the tops of his sunglasses, disrupting the perfectly wicked curve his brow had arched itself into. “What, just pick one and take it for a spin?”

Aziraphale clasped his hands together in his lap. “Well, yes.”

Crowley’s mouth contorted in a few different directions before settling somewhere near _huh_ and then proceeding towards _hmm_. “Didn’t you try that once already? Around the time of--” He waved his hand as if to say _somewhere around the time they were building that big ole wall in China_.

“The Great Wall,” Aziraphale corrected.

“It wasn’t that great,” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale shifted again and wriggled his toes. He’d read once that _stars in one’s shoes_ was the Icelandic turn of phrase for the sensation and he thought that was a lovely thing to call such an annoyingly unpleasant sensation. “And yes, I did try a gender once, but humans have developed an understanding of a great many more since then.”

“Will you keep the same pronouns?”

“I think I shall. They’re comfortable, like an old coat.”

Crowley seemed unconvinced that it was a notion worth pursuing, but he did withdraw his leg to let a fellow passenger go by before she soiled herself, and said: “You do you, angel.”

*

Midway through the flight, Aziraphale’s toes had wiggled all they could and his bottom had shifted so many times he’d begun to worry about the seat of his trousers wearing thin. He was preparing to admit defeat and request that he be let into the aisle to stretch his legs for a bit when Crowley made a snarly little sound in his throat, snapped his fingers, and Aziraphale’s small uncomfortable seat was no longer so small nor so uncomfortable. In fact he was now seated upon a luxurious blue and white deck chair accompanied by the sun on his face, a cool ocean breeze and reassuringly, Crowley.

“Better?”

“Much,” Aziraphale replied, relieved. A swarm of children ran past in mouse ears. He waved at them.

Crowley groaned. “I was aiming for the party ship,” he lamented, but being a demon and all, this could have been a lie. He deftly scooped a pair of daiquiris from a passing server’s tray and handed one to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale gave the tiny colorful umbrella a twirl. “Seems like a party to me.”

Crowley sipped at his drink while something that might have been a smile flirted around the edge of his bright green straw.

Eager to stretch their legs, they wandered around the ship, marvelling at just how large it was. It was a great deal bigger than any ocean liner Aziraphale had ever stepped foot on and nearly every deck (there were so many!) was festooned with bright colors and cheery stewards. There was a manufactured aspect to its jolly facade that Aziraphale would have commented on if Crowley hadn’t done so first. An inky blot amongst all the white paint and bright accents, Crowley skirted an assuredly underpaid steward picking up litter and remarked: “Funny isn’t it how much humans pay to visit a place that seems all joy and rainbows instead of simply doing the work to make everywhere pleasant from the get-go.

“I suppose I’d have been out of a job long ago if they’d been that clever,” Crowley added, and left his near-empty daiquiri glass on a little ledge where it was sure to get bumped and shatter everywhere.

Aziraphale quietly nudged it to safety.

By less demonic means than their arrival, they discovered keys to an oceanview stateroom in their pockets. They also discovered the room was a convenient distance to one of the ship’s pools and as certain old habits were wont to linger, Crowley promptly settled into basking. Simultaneously at that end of the pool more than one bottle of sunscreen happened to be a lot more empty than it should have been. He snickered at the rude noises while Aziraphale left to go change into his favorite bathing costume. Tucked in his valise was a woolen rose colored one-piece from the 1920s, one of the first to do without sleeves, and as he examined his reflection in a full-length mirror, he found it to still be quite fetching.

Crowley recoiled rather dramatically upon his return. “Oh. Oh, no. That one doesn’t suit you at all.”

“How can you tell?”

“Your face is doing a bit of…” Crowley’s nose wrinkled and he showed teeth. At some point he’d donned his own bathing costume. It was a great deal more revealing than the rose colored one-piece. It was snug and shiny and black, as just about everything else Crowley preferred to wear.

“It does feel quite itchy,” Aziraphale admitted. “I should at least give it a day.”

Aziraphale in fact gave the gender he’d slipped into during his wardrobe change only twelve hours, thirty-six minutes, and nine seconds, after which he retired and drew a soothing bath, enjoyed half a bottle of wine, and vowed never to attempt this gender again. It’d been rather like sharing his skin with a hive full of bees, only less pleasant because bees were delightful little creatures.

He tried again the next afternoon. Crowley was less horrified but also not demonstrably enthused by this particular gender identity. Aziraphale admittedly wasn’t much enthused either. He hardly noticed his new gender while floating around in the pool, which was an improvement over the discomfort of the last, but at supper, he set down his fork and knife, took off his mouse ears, and abruptly reverted to his usual state.

“Bit gooey, that one,” Crowley remarked.

“Like a pot of jam,” Aziraphale agreed. He examined his hands and considered how very much he enjoyed having a body. Why was having a gender identity to go along with it so frustratingly difficult? “Perhaps this was a bad idea.”

“If you insist on giving it another go, I suppose I could give it a try as well. In solidarity. Wouldn’t be my first time.”

“Oh, Crowley, that won’t be necessary.”

“Too late,” she said, and speared a slice of fruit with the tines of her fork.

“Oh, God,” Aziraphale blurted out. He knew he must have an expression not dissimilar to the one that Crowley had bestowed upon him at his first attempt. “Look at you. Sitting there so very ladylike.” (The demoness Crowley didn’t actually _look_ any different of course, but she was most certainly a woman now and there was a newly specific sort of slyness about her when she ate a slice of peach off her fork and licked the juice from the corner of her mouth.)

“Your turn,” Crowley said. “What’ll it be this time?”

Aziraphale screwed his eyes shut and concentrated very hard to slip into an entirely new gender. So new in fact that humans hadn’t even had an inkling of it yet, as the only other soul to embody this particular gender identity was still in the womb and not due to be born for another month.

He cautiously opened his left eye and then his right. “This one is…,” he shook out his arms and gingerly picked up his silverware again. So far there was no itching nor any hint of jam or strange prickly sensations at the base of his wings. “Honestly, it’s not bad in the slightest.”

“Suits you well enough.”

“Do you truly think so?”

Crowley gestured with her fork. “Moreso than the others did. You seem a great deal more comfortable in this one from the start.”

“It _is_ comfortable,” Aziraphale agreed, as there was something soothing about the way it moved in waves. He continued on with supper in much better spirits. However, a spoonful into the dessert course, in the middle of savoring the taste of perfectly burnt caramel spun into a delicate lattice, he began to notice what was off.

“Something the matter?”

“My pronouns don’t quite fit right with this one,” he said. It felt a lot like what he imagined a loose tooth was like, all wiggly and awkward and something he couldn’t stop worrying at once he noticed it. “How disappointing. I’ve had them so very long; since the beginning of language, I suppose. They’re all cozy and lived in.”

“Third time not the charm after all?” Crowley inquired. Aziraphale remorsefully shook his head, and Crowley gave him a commiserating pat on the shoulder. She pushed her share of dessert towards him, and Aziraphale didn’t even bother pretending he hadn’t been coveting it. (Coveting was strong word, but he did adore a good slice of pie.)

Aziraphale tried to keep the gender another few minutes at least, but the shine had worn off and honestly, he felt tired. “Drat,” he said, and the instant Aziraphale went back to his usual angelically genderless self, Crowley raised her brow and shed his womanhood without a word.

They ate the pie in shared bites and then wandered into a live production of Mulan that made Aziraphale feel a touch better (based on some of the conflicted souls in the audience, not having a gender by default was, upon reflection, rather convenient) and which caused Crowley to roll his eyes over that big ole wall for a second time in a century.

*

Somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, Aziraphale was busy pondering things. Not anything important or earth-shattering, but asking himself the sort of mundane middle-of-the-night questions that any number of humans could certainly relate to. “Crowley...,” he began, preparing to cast his musings into the darkness settled snugly around them. “Do you ever wonder why we’ve never, oh, _you know._” 

“Heavens, no!” Crowley sat bolt upright. He wasn’t being deliberately obtuse, he’d simply been having a snooze when awoken by Aziraphale’s abrupt--and frankly, vague--query. He scrubbed at his face, ridding himself of the remainder of a disturbingly divine dream. “Sorry, what were you going on about?”

Lain atop the covers beside him, fingers laced over his belly, Aziraphale restated the question. Crowley’s eyes gleamed faintly. Just enough light snuck in from the window that Aziraphale could make out the outline of Crowley’s form; unfortunately the light wasn’t brave enough to sneak in far enough to illuminate Crowley’s features further.

“Why we’ve never _you know_’d?” Crowley repeated.

“Yes. Don’t you think if we ever were destined to have a bit of _you know_, it ought to have happened by now?”

“_You know…,_” Crowley repeated once more, and Aziraphale imagined his lips were holding the syllable long after it faded. His faintly gleaming eyes had narrowed into little yellow slivers.

“After all this time it seems silly. We’ve done just about everything together besides that.”

Crowley’s eyes widened. “Oh, SEX! You mean sssex! Sexual congress...intercourse! Bumping uglies,” Crowley swatted a hand at Aziraphale and scoffed. “Why didn’t you just say fucking? Or doing the horizontal _mam~bo._”

“I did. Just, not in so many words.”

Crowley rattled off a few more euphemisms, likely hoping to cause Aziraphale to redden a shade or two. (Aziraphale had in fact flushed a good three and a quarter shades darker on his cheeks, a full four if his neck were to be taken into account.) “You know, I never really thought about it,” Crowley mused. “Had _you_ thought about it?”

“Before today? _Noooo,_” Aziraphale said. He was thinking it about presently, however, and had been since just before the pie. (During the pie, he didn’t entertain a single thought about having sex with Crowley at all. It was very good pie.) “I fear I may have accidentally acquired a sexual identity along with that last gender, and I think it may have...stuck around.”

“Oh, no, Aziraphale! Sex complicates everything. That was the very first thing we learned from humans.”

“Second,” Aziraphale pointed out. “Apples are not as good as pears, mind, but they do come in so many varieties one never really tires of them. And I didn’t mean to! It just happened.”

“Can you get rid of it?”

“Well.”

“Hold on a minute. Do you _want_ to get rid of it?” Crowley asked, which was perhaps the more important question at this juncture.

“Not entirely. To be perfectly honest it’s rather nice fancying you.”

Crowley’s eyes narrowed again, this time skeptically. He caused the lights to turn on and Aziraphale saw the skepticism wasn’t merely in his eyes, but was lurking at the corners of them too. It also made an appearance in the shape of his brow, and in the way his lips had sort of flattened together. For the first time in some six thousand years, Aziraphale found Crowley’s skepticism terribly attractive. In fact tonight he’d discovered that just about everything about Crowley was terribly attractive.

His gaze wandered and Crowley’s followed.

“Are you thinking about me that way right now? You’re not…. Oh,” Crowley sat up and not-so-casually slipped his feet to the floor when Aziraphale’s gaze lingered a touch too long. “Are you serious!”

“I didn’t want to say, but it seems this one has a bit of a fetish.”

“I would have considered a bit of _you know_, but not if you’re going to be thinking about my _you know_ all the time. The best part about being a snake was _not_ having feet! Why couldn’t it have been anything else? Rubber horse masks. Miniskirts. Balloons, even.”

“I could try again. On purpose this time,” Aziraphale suggested. He propped himself up on an elbow like one of those proverbial french girls. “What do you imagine someone like me ought to be sexually attracted to?”

Crowley hadn’t the slightest idea. He hadn’t bothered tempting humans with lustful thoughts on purpose for centuries upon centuries, and besides, that was always after the fact. By the time he was tempting them with thoughts of toothsome girls with dark hair, or that burly fellow down at the smithy, it was because humans already knew what they wanted and went around broadcasting it to the world with all their hormones, and their coy smiles, and their furtive gazes. (He admittedly did still love inciting a furtive gaze, which was in part the reason he dressed the way he did.)

“I have no idea!” Crowley stood up and began to pace back and forth in the space between the bed at the window. As did the room, his imagination in this moment only stretched so far. He pulled out his mobile to do some quick searching on the internet, but the parental locks were downright hellish and he gave up in a matter of seconds. “How specific does a sexual identity need to be do you think?”

Aziraphale considered all the varied couplings, thruplings, and so forth that he’d observed during his time on Earth. “I expect God made them a great big spectrum, like the genders.”

Crowley stopped his very attractive pacing and put his hands on his narrow and very attractive hips. “That makes a great deal of sense, actually. Then the nurture gets sprinkled on top like seasoning. Dash of preferences here and a pinch of horniness there....”

As Crowley rambled on with a great deal of psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo from the seventies mixed with the early aughts tossed in the mix, Aziraphale went ahead and tried on a new sexual identity or two.

“This one seems nice,” he said, but when he opened his eyes again and gazed at Crowley it was with only familiar platonic love bursting at the seams of his heart and none of the pit of the stomach tingling that he’d been enjoying so much.

He tried again and immediately regretted it. And then a third time, which he also immediately regretted, as the tingling came roaring back and Crowley was very distractingly handsome stood there in his slinky black suit, but again, a fetish had snuck in, and this one was far too troublesome.

“Bibliophile?” Crowley guessed, tracking the way Aziraphale’s gaze slid towards the bedside drawer and its hidden bible. “The naughty sort?”

Aziraphale felt his blush all the way from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. “Unfortunately. It’d make keeping up the shop far too awkward.”

“Pity. That one probably makes the most sense.”

“I’ll try again come morning,” Aziraphale said, remarkably weary for only a few moments worth of being attracted to things. That the majority of humans had to deal with this all the time must be thoroughly exhausting.

Come morning and straight on to evening Aziraphale tried no less than two hundred and thirty different sexual identities, discovering in the end that he didn’t truly like a single one of them. He’d attempted everything along the major spectrum, several twice, just to be sure, but he simply didn’t care for being attracted to just about anyone or anything other than Crowley.

*

He broke the news that he’d settled on a sexual identity to Crowley on Pirate Night. It took longer than necessary since at every other word Aziraphale paused to offer a cheery “Avast!” or “Yo ho!” to the children weaving around them with toy swords and little eyepatches embroidered with skulls and crossbones.

“Are you going to try banging it with me as well?” Aziraphale asked, making a pistol gesture with his hand not unlike the scamp squeezing between them and the railing in order to ambush his playmates.

“Try giving it a shot with you,” Crowley corrected. He was lounging against said railing with a comically large plastic tankard in his hand. “I don’t know, angel. I don’t think being sexually attracted to anything is a good idea for my kind. It might very well turn me into an incubus, and you know how I hate specialization.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, trying not to seem crestfallen, although his crest was metaphorically plummeting off the side of the ship right about now.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t,” Crowley gestured with his tankard to say _you know_. It was a very effective gesture given the sudden lascivious looks tossed his way from the other adults nearby, and Aziraphale concurred that perhaps encouraging Crowley to desire to have sex with humans or human-shaped beings might not be a Good thing.

He was busy mulling over the potential ramifications to humankind when his train of thought circled back around, pulled into the station, and loudly blew its horn until it was sure he’d gotten the message. “Really, you will? With me?”

“Sure, why not. I tried it a few times when there was absolutely nothing else to do. As I recall it was intensely messy. (The mess didn’t raise Crowley’s opinion of that century in the slightest.) Felt all right though.” He sipped from his tankard and peered down at a youngster who had stopped to stare at him.

“You look like a villain!” the child said, rather accusingly.

“Tell it to your mother,” Crowley replied, and let his sunglasses slip down the bridge of his nose. He flicked his tongue out for good measure. The little girl’s eyes went wide as saucers before she bopped him with her sword and promptly ran away shrieking with excitement.

“Please don’t!” Aziraphale called out to the child’s retreating back.

“So, are we doing this or not?” Crowley asked.

A bit flustered because until now Aziraphale had never considered all the wicked things Crowley’s tongue could do and it was entirely _too much too fast_, Aziraphale shook his head and wrangled his desires out of the forefront of his mind. “Not yet,” he said, and gestured at the show. “I want to know who wins!”

“The pirates win.”

“Aren’t they all pirates?”

“The good pirates, then.”

“Oh, right.”

*

The good pirates did win. However Aziraphale’s determination to wait for the opportune moment, did not.

Being in possession of a sexual orientation with an interest in performing carnal acts with Crowley instilled in Aziraphale a certain urgency that they both found difficult to ignore, for varying reasons.

“It’s distracting,” Crowley said, referring to the manner in which Aziraphale was doing just about everything to avoid looking directly at him. This was a departure from the usual way of things, wherein it took a constant stream of misdeeds to dissuade Aziraphale’s gaze from its habit of falling adoringly upon him.

They waited to disembark at port with a throng of other tourists from the ship. At the other end of the gangplank one of the tour organizers was frantically trying to figure out why none of the names on her list were matching up with any of the passengers. A wave of frustration echoed through the crowd and Aziraphale was so wrapped up in his not-looking-at-Crowley that he didn’t even notice.

“It’s not my fault. The more I look at you, the more I think _lewd thoughts,_” Aziraphale leaned in to hiss through his teeth. The leaning in and catching the vaguely minty scent of Crowley’s hair product also triggered some lewd thoughts.

“So let’s get it over with then. We can go back to the cabin right now and do the deed as many times as it takes for you to get it out of your system.”

“But what if I like it?”

“Isn’t that the point? All that wriggling around and sweating wouldn’t be worth the effort if you didn’t enjoy it.”

The woman ahead of them who had clearly been eavesdropping on their entire exchange cast a discreet but measuring look at Crowley then signalled a subtle thumbs up to Aziraphale.

“Thank you, dear,” he told her, before pulling Crowley aside for a bit more privacy. “What if I like it a little too much?”

Crowley looked him up and down. “After all the going on about why haven’t we slept together, are you stalling now because you’re worried you’ll turn into a roaring nymphomaniac with a pornography addiction the moment our genitals touch?”

“A little.” Aziraphale’s eyes widened in terror. “What if it’s like a strong cup of sencha paired with a perfect, melty bite of sashimi.”

“What if it is?” Crowley slipped an arm around his shoulders, a twining, sinuous motion that sent a thrilling shiver down Aziraphale’s spine. “I know that you know that you enjoy a good meal now and again, but speaking as a demon, you could hardly be considered a glutton. Think of it this way,” he said, and gestured expansively at the bright blue of the sky, “sex is a perfect parallel to food in that it’s another of the many small pleasures of the body that humans unfailingly manage to warp into something weird and terrible.”

“I suppose when you put it that way,” Aziraphale murmured, and Crowley patted him on the back. As he withdrew his arm he seemed pleased with himself for delivering a successful pep talk.

It was successful enough that Aziraphale was sorely tempted to skip the chance to go ashore. He’d even gone so far as to take hold of Crowley’s wrist with the intent to lead him back to the stateroom, when Crowley nodded towards the gangplank. “Queue’s finally moving if you still want to go poking around in that church’s collection of moldy old bibles.”

Conflicted, Aziraphale wrestled with the immediate wants of a newly lustful body and his eternal love of the written word. Even if he already missed the weight of Crowley’s arm around him, what were the odds he’d be back in this corner of the world anytime soon? Surely he should live life to the fullest while here. Perusing a set of rare books not currently in his own collection was a treat. In comparison, the pleasures of the flesh were easy enough to delay for a touch longer.

“Do you mind if we…?” Aziraphale had begun to ask when Crowley slipped his arm free of Aziraphale’s grip only to take hold of Aziraphale’s hand and clasp it in his own.

“Come on, angel,” he said, giving Aziraphale a gentle tug. “The church is only open to tourists for a few hours and we both know you’re going to want all the time you can get with the blessed things.”

*

Crowley had waited outside the church for more than a few hours when Aziraphale pulled himself away from what was a charming collection tended to by a very nice little priest with a near encyclopedic knowledge of his parishioners. It was well past noon by now, high time that they ought to be heading back to the ship, but Crowley insisted they ought to do at least something else ashore. He pointed out breezily that they probably wouldn’t be back in this corner of the world anytime soon, a sentiment disturbingly reminiscent of Aziraphale’s own thought process some hours previous. Agreeing under the pretense that it was only fair that Crowley get to do something he wanted, Aziraphale kept the bit about his similarly devious inner monologue to himself.

They wandered through town, down twisty side streets paved with cobblestones and a main drag full of shops that clearly catered to tourists who piled off the cruise ships. The shops were stuffed to the rafters with the sorts of gaudy plastic trinkets and shot glasses found in every port, major city, and seaside getaway around the world. There were plenty of shell-based accessories, palm tree motifs, and so on and so forth to choose between.

They didn’t buy anything in town other than a bit of fruit from a street vendor, and Crowley steered them down a path that ultimately led to a nice long stroll along the beach. With the sky ablaze with color and a soft warm wind swirling around them, it was unspeakably romantic. It was so unspeakable that neither one of them commented on the fact that they’d begun to hold hands again or that they were both definitely thinking that the situation had escalated from a companionable walk to a Romantic Moment worthy of capital letters. They also didn’t say a word when the mood crescendoed and they shared their very first non-chaste, non-platonic, subtly mango-flavored kiss. (Crowley did make a pleased murmuring sound after the fact, but that could hardly be counted as speech.)

As far the beach that they’d stood upon was concerned, it was possibly the most Romantic Moment the several billion grains of sand had ever witnessed. The sand would blush if it wasn’t already a lovely shade of pink.

When they returned to port it was only by sheer coincidence that the ship hadn’t departed without them. It had tried, several times.

“The two of you are lucky devils,” the officer who welcomed them back aboard said. It wasn’t a terribly enthusiastic welcome. He looked less than pleased to still be attending the gangway.

“Yes, well, you’re half right,” Aziraphale replied.

“It’s a good thing we were held up, I suppose,” the officer said. “A guest had a medical emergency a half hour past and was able to go straight to hospital.”

Crowley pretended ignorance and Aziraphale thought he might tell the poor man that the ship was likely to be much more cooperative in its efforts to sail off now that they’d returned, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the beach.

Or, more accurately, the slow, gentle kiss shared at the beach. Or, even more accurately, the soft pleased sound Crowley had uttered in its wake.

Aziraphale kept stealing glances at Crowley who’d stuffed his hands in his absurdly tight trouser pockets and was observing the rearranging of deckchairs. In the moment it was near impossible to recall what it was like to look at Crowley without thinking how nice it would be ravish him. Perhaps this latest sexuality with its moderate libido and its fixation on occasionally-do-gooding-but-trustworthy-demons was a bit much. He’d gone thousands of years barely entertaining the idea of sexual intimacy. What was a few more days or weeks or months?

But then Crowley’s head tipped lazily towards the direction of their stateroom and he mouthed the words, “Now, angel?” and by some miracle there they were.

*

In that tidy room with its neutral carpet and its prime ocean view, things proceeded apace. Aziraphale had paused for three-point-two seconds with his heart in his throat and his pulse thundering in his ears before he put his hands to Crowley’s face and kissed him a second time.

This kiss was much dirtier. The _good_ kind of dirty, not the _waited a few weeks too long to hoover up the dust_ sort of dirty. It was a toe-curling, tie-curling, _tongue_-curling kiss, and Aziraphale was positively floating.

“Sorry, should I pop my wings out too?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale’s feet came back down to the ground. He was about to reflexively say that there was no need to bother when he caught himself. He chewed on the corner of his lip and nodded. “Would you? If you don’t mind,” he said, his own wings settling down behind him.

Crowley gave a nonchalant shrug and then his wings were filling the room. They were standard issue, a mirror image of his own despite the color, but they were Crowley’s and that made them tremendously special.

As Crowley drew them down to curve them close to his form, Aziraphale reached out to caress the soft feathers along the bend. “Why did you keep them? I imagine very few other demons did.”

Crowley extended one wing again and glanced over at the stretch of his feathers. “Well, Satan adopted the whole bat wing look early on and pretty soon every demon was all leathery wings and scales, and I was already halfway out of my scaly phase…,” Crowley said. He drew his wing back and turned his gaze upward briefly. “You know, I suppose I never really thought about why precisely....”

“I like that you kept them. It suits you.”

Crowley may have blushed at the compliment. It was hard for Aziraphale to tell as Crowley had spat out a cranky, “Oh, shut up!” before realizing that the quicker way to ensure that Aziraphale did indeed shut up was to kiss him again.

This kiss was-- Well, it was much, _much_ dirtier.

Aziraphale, having read a great many novels and other works of literature that featured lusty kisses—many writ in great detail—was well prepared for this kind of snogging. Crowley, drawing away after a minute with a faint hiss, seemed less so.

“Aziraphale, are you sure we’re doing this the right way? I don’t remember this bit being ssso--” He waved a hand, as if to say complicated, or perhaps, frenzied.

“I don’t think there _is_ a right way.”

“Seems different in the movies,” Crowley said, unconvinced.

“Depends on the movie, I’d imagine,” Aziraphale replied. He proceeded to disengage his fingers from Crowley’s shirtfront and unhooking his leg from where it’d hitched itself around Crowley’s. “Did you want to try and check the internet for pointers?”

“Angel, I don’t think that’s really the best place to look.”

Just as they’d done with a stick in the dirt and paint in caves before upgrading to the quill and the printing press and the hand-held video camera, one of the very first things humans had recorded on the internet were sexual deeds and conquests. Of course, Aziraphale considered, human nature dictated that a lot of it would be--as it had been over the ages--similarly embellished rubbish or anatomically improbable fantasies. “I suppose not. Well, you’ve done this before. What was it like if it wasn’t…?” He gestured as if to say frenzied, or perhaps, complicated.

“It was a lot…,” Crowley searched for the right word. It was a very thorough search. Ultimately he settled on: “Gentler.”

Aziraphale was taken aback. The last and filthiest kiss was instigated by Crowley and while it hadn’t been gentle so much as the kissing equivalent of devouring one another, it had been a very good devouring in his estimation. “Was I too aggressive?” he asked, blinking. He glanced down at where his hands were plastered to Crowley’s front and was suddenly aware of the dull heat generated beneath his palms and the urge he’d had to get the thin bit of fabric separating them out of the way. He’d done a fair bit of grinding against Crowley’s thigh as well.

Crowley followed his gaze and appeared flustered, his feathers ruffling as his wings flexed in agitation.

“I’m not used to all these urges,” Aziraphale admitted. He took a full step back and tugged down the front of his waistcoat as he tried to compose himself. “Maybe you were right and this isn’t a good idea at all. When I look at you now part of me wants to lay you down on that bed and perform wanton acts upon you and at the same time all I want to do is tell you how lovely you are. Every inch of you is so precious and dear to me, Crowley.”

He reached out and let his fingers trail through Crowley’s primaries, downy and soft in the way that only angel wings could be. “White never sat right on you,” Aziraphale said and smiled wistfully. “Far better the color of the night sky with its endless stars and boundless possibility. That’s what I’ve always loved about you, you know. Even if sometimes it gave me fits. You knew God made all of this and yet you still looked around and wondered and imagined like they did.”

Crowley had gone straight on past flustered and into the realm of overwhelmingly embarrassed. Like kissing, it wasn’t something he had much firsthand experience with. The kissing was far more tolerable, so he took hold of Aziraphale’s face and tried it again.

“Crowley!”

“What? You enjoyed it the last time.”

“I did, and I enjoyed it this time as well, but I suspect you’re kissing me as a distraction! ”

“A distraction from what?” Crowley played innocent, which he wasn’t very good at. He pivoted to straight up lying, which he was excellent at. “You were rambling for a while. I thought you’d want to get back to the tongue stuff.”

“Rambling! I was complimenting you!” Aziraphale’s wings drew tight against his back as realization dawned. “Oh, you bastard you _liked_ it. And you don’t like that you liked it.”

Crowley was suddenly looking everywhere except at Aziraphale, and his own wings had pulled in tight, a wall of charcoal bracketing his arms. “That’s preposterous.”

“It’s more than that,” Aziraphale said, ushering aside all the urges and signals his libido was trying frantically to get him to act on. Heaven knew he’d been around Crowley long enough to recognize every bit of his body language--well, Heaven most certainly did not know, but figuratively speaking, Aziraphale was an expert on all things Crowley.

And this was not in the lexicon of ways Crowley generally reacted to compliments.

Compliments engendered eye-rolling, or hissing, or shoving him up against the wall of former Satanic hospitals in a vaguely threatening manner.

Aziraphale put a hand over his mouth to stifle a gasp. “When were you going to tell me?”

“I didn’t think it was going to work on the first try.”

“Masochist with a praise kink? Rather awkward for a demon.”

“You have no idea.” Oh, Crowley knew he deserved plenty of praise over the years for all the demonic works he’d unleashed on the world, and for being clever enough to think up something like the Arrangement and tempt Aziraphale into going along with it. But receiving compliments for simply being _himself_ was far too uncomfortable. He thought he might combust on the spot with all the feelings that were skittering around his insides.

“How, um, specific is the sexual attraction you attempted, if I might ask?” Aziraphale tendered, hoping the answer wasn’t so similar to his own. (It was, dear reader, a highly specific sexual attraction that went so far in the opposite direction that it circled back around and closed the loop. Occasionally devious but trustworthy angels, were, after all, as rare as occasionally do-gooding but trustworthy demons.)

As Crowley confessed, Aziraphale stretched his wings and put his hand to his chin. Equipped with more information he considered anew the situation they’d gotten themselves in to. “When you said you remembered things being more gentle,” he began, choosing his words carefully. “Were you referring to the fervor of my kisses?” 

“Not at all. That part was fine. It was a rubbish century, so maybe I’m misremembering, but I feel like there wasn’t any dizziness, aching, or this much leakage for starters,” Crowley said. He took off his sunglasses and tossed them to the side. He stared at his hands and turned them palms up, flexing each finger in turn. “Oh no. Has this body gone off? Am I ill?”

“Oh, darling,” Aziraphale said utterly charmed, understanding finally just what complicated and frenzied had meant to Crowley. “You’re not ill.”

Aziraphale embraced him fully and with great enthusiasm, arms and wings curling tightly around Crowley’s form. Crowley squirmed a bit before settling into the hug, and after a time Aziraphale drew back enough to capture Crowley’s face between his hands. “It’s the feelings, my love—physical _and_ emotional. Combined that’s a great deal more to manage at once than I imagine either of us are accustomed to.”

Crowley blinked once, slowly.

“As I said: confusing.” Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand in his own. He flattened Crowley’s hand to his chest so Crowley could feel the rapid thud of his heart. “The thought of making love to you gives me nerves like I’ve never felt before. It’s terrifying and thrilling and honestly, I feel a bit...naughty.”

Crowley’s mouth parted, and his tongue began to toy at the edge of his teeth. A little shiver ran through him and his wings again. “Like you’ve stolen a sweet?”

“More like I’ve gone and done a whole slew of tempting and not a single blessing in sight.”

The shiver was more pronounced this time, and Crowley’s teeth closed on his lip. “Are you tempting me right now, Aziraphale?”

“Why, I am!” Aziraphale said surprised, and proceeded to usher a completely unresisting Crowley to lay upon the bed. 

Pressed to recline against the pillows, his wings extending far beyond the edges of the mattress, Crowley was a portrait of contradictions. He was at once both sinuous and sharp-edged, liquid and hard angles. His shirt had come untucked and the waist of his trousers sat low enough to expose the sharp cut of his hip bones. He shivered and sported a delightful flush as he beckoned Aziraphale to him.

Aziraphale had worn the shape of Crowley’s body, it shouldn’t be so exciting to reveal it now, and yet his fingers trembled as he divested Crowley of each garment in turn. Modern fashion was a dull affair generally devoid of craftsmanship, but Aziraphale took care to gently fold Crowley’s waistcoat and shirt as Crowley wriggled out of them.

He gave up on folding somewhere between stripping Crowley of his left sock and undoing his own bow tie, in part because he couldn’t draw his gaze away from the inviting sprawl of Crowley’s body and also because Crowley had begun to simply throw every garment on the floor as soon as Aziraphale had removed them.

“How beautiful you are,” Aziraphale said, when at last Crowley was laying nude before him. He perched above him and ran his knuckles along the shelf of Crowley’s ribs to the soft hollow of his belly, watching as gooseflesh and shivers rose in the wake of his touch. “How very crafty...” Aziraphale added, “keeping the ship in port and inconveniencing thousands of souls.”

Crowley squirmed in delight at having Aziraphale praise him for a misdeed.

“And to think that you _saved_ a life at the same time, Crowley.” Aziraphale beamed, delighted to point out Crowley’s good deed and feeling only a little bit wicked at the way it made Crowley shudder and squirm anew with pleasure-laden discomfort.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley tried to protest, but it wasn’t so much protesting as it was trying to wrap all of his limbs around Aziraphale and do _something_ about all those messy emotions trying to spill out of him. His wings were in a constant state of trembling, each thundering beat of his racing heart cascading to the tips of his primaries. “I feel like I might burst if this drags on.”

Aziraphale was flush with excitement as well, but he could envision spending hours learning Crowley’s body in this manner. He said as much between a fresh spate of kisses as his hands wandered and his legs tangled with Crowley’s.

“Don’t you dare, angel...,” Crowley said in what was probably meant to be a threatening growl, but came out more as a needy moan. His hips pushed upward, trying desperately to tempt Aziraphale into a proper coupling.

“We can aim for leisurely if there’s a next time then,” Aziraphale conceded. He extended his wings to curl them around Crowley’s, feathers brushing softly against feathers as he gathered Crowley’s wings in the embrace of his own. The cocoon of their wings softened the sound of the ship, narrowing the world down to just the two of them together in this moment, their breathing slowing moving into sync as they learned to move together more and more intimately.

The quivering of Crowley’s wings had at some point calmed and Aziraphale only noticed when the tension in them returned, charcoal primaries fanning out and pressing against the cage of his own wings.

“Bodies make the rudest sounds,” Crowley said, panting for breath. His hands were twisted in Aziraphale’s hair, his spine arching in time with the fitful stretch of his wings. A charming pink hue had risen in his cheeks.

He was devastatingly lovely, Aziraphale thought.

“Not God’s tidiest work, I’ll admit,” Aziraphale murmured, distracted by the glisten of perspiration at the dip of Crowley’s collarbone and then by the way his skin tasted there. He licked a path up Crowley’s neck and made a delighted noise when it made Crowley move against him with a sort of rolling desperation that had already become familiar. “Oh, but they have their perks,” he sighed happily, his own little wriggle evoking an answering moan from Crowley.

“You should know this one seems to be leaking even worse than before,” Crowley said, gasping. “I should’ve hydrated better.”

“You’re not going to dessicate from a bit of sweat and, oh, other fluids.”

Crowley looked unconvinced, and then, after Aziraphale shifted his attention a bit, Crowley looked unconcerned.

“Does it still feel good?” Aziraphale asked.

“I can’t tell!”

Which probably meant yes and Crowley couldn’t quite admit it. Aziraphale put his mouth near to Crowley’s and shared his breath to be sure, adding up all the little ways the sensations Crowley wrestled with revealed themselves. Through the softness of his lip, Aziraphale could trace the quivers that echoed as their bodies slid together. The hands in his hair tightened and another gasp escaped Crowley’s throat followed by a clench of muscle that sent an answering sensation rocketing along Aziraphale’s nerves. Definitely not the most well-engineered of God’s many creations, but they were certainly built well for pleasure.

“You feel wonderful, Crowley.”

Crowley hissed at the compliment, trying to turn away from Aziraphale’s gaze cast lovingly upon him at the same time that he basked in it. He groaned as the color on his cheeks stayed blazingly bright. He bared his teeth. “Say it again,” he said in an embarrassed snarl.

“You feel wonderful and you _are_ wonderful,” Aziraphale told him, thrilled to be asked to shower praise on someone he cared for so deeply. He slid his arms beneath Crowley, holding him with wings and arms together. “You can’t know how fondly I think of you, Crowley. When you do something truly Good, oh, it makes me shiver.” And he did, the electric current of it warming his belly. He buried his smile at the crook of Crowley’s neck where surely he could feel it.

“I’m good sometimes aren’t I,” Crowley said hesitantly, and the whole of his body beneath Aziraphale’s shuddered in masochistic delight. 

“Oh, Crowley, you utter bastard, you are so _incredibly Good_ when you want to be,” Aziraphale agreed, and then his own wings that had been so steady began their own trembling. He felt like the whole of his being was aflame, incandescent, and the swell of pleasure he’d been skirting crumbled like the crest of a wave, spilling out from his core and sweeping Crowley along with it.

*

_Somewhere on Deck Nine _

“So, um, how much longer are you thinking we continue on like this?” Aziraphale asked. He glanced over at Crowley who by virtue of the cucumber slices and facial mask didn’t return his gaze.

Crowley made a noncommittal sound.

“Another week? A month?” Aziraphale pressed. “A year or two?”

Crowley waved a dismissive hand, disrupting the woman desperately trying to finish buffing his nails. “I dunno, angel. I haven’t really thought about it. What about you?”

It struck Aziraphale that he hadn’t actually given it much thought either. He’d been too busy floating in a blissful sort of afterglow and enjoying the new little swoops and sizzles he got whenever he looked at Crowley. He fussed with the sleeve of his plush spa robe before apologizing to the manicurist at his left who was giving him a subtle sidelong _look_. He replaced the cucumber slices back over his own eyes. “I’d just like to know one way or another if you’ll stay attracted to me like this for the long run. I think it would be nice if we could make some plans....” He trailed off into a little sigh that was supposed to mean _that hand massage feels nice_ but which was promptly misinterpreted as the sort of sigh that meant _you know how much your willingness to play fast and loose with rules makes me uncomfortable_ and _why can’t that bitch put a ring on it_.

“If you want to turn this little arrangement into Something Official, we can talk about it later.”

The manicurists shared a look so pointed Aziraphale could feel it nearly draw blood. “It’s not like that, dears,” he tried to explain, but the woman working on his hand gave it a reassuring little pat and a squeeze. He also very distinctly felt two pairs of eyes roll heavenward and he cleared his throat. “I only meant it’s nice to have something to look forward to. If, that is, there are to be any more future somethings.”

“Aziraphale, why do you think I booked us a spa day?”

Aziraphale considered that mind-blowing sexual intercourse might have interfered with the perspicacity of his day-to-day observations. He peeled the cucumbers off his eyes again and turned once more to look at Crowley. “Do you mean to say--?”

A distinctly different pair of eyes rolled heavenward. The cucumber slices trembled to contain the blasphemy as Crowley hissed: “For God’s sake, I ordered the fruity face mask because it’s hydrating, angel.”

“So then--”

“Yesss. As leisurely as you’d like. So long as you can muster some more--” Crowley mouth twisted as he very quietly mumbled out the corner what might have been the word “condiments” or “confidence” but was a great deal more likely to be “compliments” as a bit of color promptly blossomed at the shell of his ear.

Aziraphale beamed. “Oh, I’m sure I can come up with at least one or two.”


End file.
